When unemployment figures are announced, the media takes up the challenge of trying to show what x% of joblessness looks like in human terms, and the images they choose are predictable—long lines of applicants trying to get into job fairs, rows of jobseekers at computers in job centers busily scanning listings.
These pictures reinforce the message that the right, indeed the only, way to find work is to apply for a job, wait for a response, and hope you get lucky.
Rarely does an alternative approach get noticed, and when it does it is treated as something new and foreign. Take for example a recent story I heard on NPR about a laid-off architect.
Instead of wasting his time standing in line somewhere, John Morefield is making his expertise visible at a booth he has set up at a farmer’s market in Seattle. Sandwiched between a fish market and a store that offers locally grown honey, he sells advice to homeowners who are thinking about remodeling—for 5 cents!
He got the idea from Lucy’s “5¢ Psychiatric Help” stand in Peanuts, and he is using it to do the best possible thing he can do with potential customers—engage them in conversation about problems they want to solve.
Heroes don’t stand in line. They try things they’ve never done before. They step outside their comfort zone, sign up for adventures, go for the ride and hold on for dear life!
He’s also collecting email addresses and offering the same kind of conversation on his website.
John has made the choice to get off the “post and wait” merry-go-round. He is thinking outside of the box, entrepreneurially, demonstrating his skills in the world instead of listing them on a sheet of paper (aka a resume).
Rather than pounding futilely on real or virtual doors trying to get someone to talk to him, he is attracting potential customers (aka employers) who want to engage in conversation with him.
It’s a brilliant example of “bigger-picture thinking,” the kind of thing that, according to Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, we will all need to do to stay employed in the new age of work.
The way Pink sees it, technology and globalization have pushed us out of the Information Age, where knowledge workers with dominant left-brain, linear thinking have been able to make a good living through their capacity to “acquire and apply theoretical and analytical knowledge.” We are now transitioning into the Conceptual Age, where a left-brain groove will not be enough to sustain a competitive advantage.
To thrive in the 21st century, Pink says, “We must perform work that overseas knowledge workers can’t do cheaper, that computers can’t do faster, and that satisfies the aesthetic, emotional and spiritual demands of prosperous times.”
In other words, we will need to engage the right hemisphere of our brain, the side where the creative, non-linear thinking goes on, and become more whole-brained.
Unfortunately, the same qualities that have made many of us effective as head down, step-by-step, detail-oriented, left-brain thinkers, have kept us stuck following the herd and exclusively relying on obsolete job search practices.
This may explain why there are so few stories about creative approaches to finding work, like John Morefield’s, and why so few of us strike out on our own on what Joseph Campbell called “the hero’s journey.”
Heroes don’t stand in line. They try things they’ve never done before. They step outside their comfort zone, sign up for adventures, go for the ride and hold on for dear life!
It’s unlikely that the architect at the farmer’s market feels much like a hero, but that’s how I see him. He is using his creativity not just to re-design kitchens, but to recreate himself, and the hero’s journey is always about being transformed.
What I see in his example is a response to the question a client once asked me: “I know looking for work is a full time job, but what do I do all day?”
My answer is, feed your creativity.
- Allow space in your day to play with ideas. Grab a legal pad and write them down. ( I outlined this column in a doctor’s office waiting room.)
- Get together with others to brainstorm. Let wild ideas flourish. Don’t let anyone shut down the flow with analysis or judgment.
- Practice two disciplines from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. 1. Start with writing morning pages to clear away your mental chatter and make space for new thinking. 2. Regularly take yourself out to new places where you can see the world with fresh eyes.
- Try a few of the exercises Daniel Pink has put together in A Whole New Mind for the purpose of helping people expand their right brain capacities.
- Journal on a regular basis, even a few thoughts each day. There is magic in putting down the ideas that are inside you on a page. It leads you deeper into your creative potential to be the person you were meant to be.
